Resurgence of the Anniversary Oak

 

In this post: Planting the Anniversary Oak from back in April 2020 you can read.  It details the events that took place as my bride and I planted the Anniversary Oak tree.  You can read that post by clicking on the link to understand why we call it the Anniversary Oak, but I'll give you a quick summary.

My wife and I will be celebrating our 32nd Anniversary on October 20th.  Tricia and I were engaged in San Antonio, Texas on the River Walk.  After we were engaged, we were walking around 33 years ago and I picked up some acorns from some of the trees in front of the Alamo.  I figured how cool it would be to have a mighty oak tree to remind us of the strength of a good marriage.  I was able to get one of the acorns to germinate.  The tree grew to be about two and a half feet tall in a pot we had outside our apartment in Houston.  Then someone pulled it out of the pot and it died!

Several years ago, we returned to San Antonio and I got another handful of acorns and got another one to germinate.  This one was about 3 feet tall.  We picked out a good spot in the yard for it, the perfect spot.  It was doing fine, BUT stopped growing and lost all it's leaves.  Before you knew it, it was dead!  It made us so sad to see the tree with no leaves, barren and dead.    I wanted to give it every chance to rejuvenate, but the day came when, regrettably, I had to break it off at the bottom.  I just left the roots in the ground.  Looking at the broken off tree, sure enough the inside of the little tree was brown and dead.

Marriage, while not easy, has turned out to be a breeze in comparison to growing an oak tree that commemorates our matrimonial union.  Imagine my surprise and joy when I walked in the yard the other day where the tree had been planted and saw what's shown in the photo at the top of this blog post.  In that photo, you can see where I broke off the dead tree.  But you can also see the fresh, healthy green growth coming from the roots below!

I rushed in to tell Tricia the good news.  She was ecstatic and suggested that I might put a tomato cage around it to protect it.  Good idea!  I did just that.  Then the other night, we were walking around the yard after dusk.  We rounded the corner and Tricia tripped over the tomato cage.  It was dark and she just didn't see it.  The next morning at daylight, I looked and saw that she had stepped on the new growth of the live oak, bending and injuring the little tree.

You can see in the photo, I did my best to make a splint from a stick and loosely taped it with the oak tree to keep it straight.  After two days, it's still looking good.  I'm keeping it watered and added a little fertilizer.  I am determined to make this tree survive!  Imagine how big this tree would be had we been able to plant that first tree from 32 years ago?  

Planting the Anniversary Oak

In THIS POST FROM 2015 I talk about and show pictures from our engagement in San Antonio and anniversary almost 30 years ago, our germinating a live oak acorn from the Alamo and our ordeal with our 'Anniversary Alamo Oak.'  The story takes a tragic turn, but things are salvaged and good comes out of bad.  Click the link above to read it for background.

As described in the link above, the handful of Alamo Acorns (part 2) resulted in one of them germinating.  I nurtured it and now it is healthy and 3 feet tall.  We decided on a beautiful day this past weekend, to take it out of the pot and root it into good soil.  We loaded the wagon with all the gear needed for planting and walked out to find the perfect spot.

My Smiling Bride

We picked a spot in the lowest part of the yard where the soil will stay the dampest during droughts.  It is also close enough to the pasture where it will provide some shade to the farm animals as it grows taller.  I dug a nice hole, pulled the tree out of the pot, put it in the hole and put some good potting soil mixed with regular soil into the hole.

Tricia snapped a photo of me with our anniversary oak. 

And here is my wife posing with our anniversary oak.  Who knows how big the first one would be right now - 30 years.  It would be a nice-sized tree! 

The Queen and her tree

The little live oak is in a nice spot so that we can view it while swinging, sitting around our fire pit, or sitting on the back patio.  Yes, the tree just belongs here!

We fertilized it, made a 'well' around it with a berm and watered it in.  Each day I'll add water until we get a good rain.  It has been unseasonably dry in April, only raining 1 inch all month so far.  The spot we planted it in is close enough to the house where we can pull a hose out to it to water, if needed.

So now, we'll just let time tick on and watch our live oak tree grow.  Perhaps birds will eventually build their nests in the branches.  Maybe our great grand kids will climb its limbs.  Perhaps a grandchild will swing on a tire swing in its shade.  Maybe none of that will happen.  Perhaps the memory of the tree's meaning is the important thing - like the acorn growing a mighty oak, a marriage starts out with great hope and promise.  There are set-backs, droughts, rainy seasons, catastrophes.  But over time, if that tree is nurtured and the couple is patient and kind, a monument that stands the test of time can grow, blessed by God and built on the foundation of love.  And that legacy of love can be enjoyed by the couple as well as generations to follow.  Grow strong, little oak!